


September

by enigma731



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Developing Friendships, F/M, Gen, Platonic Relationships, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-27 22:26:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10818012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigma731/pseuds/enigma731
Summary: Natasha studies him for a long moment, trying to decide whether she believes this last assertion. “So basically you’re trying to make an invention to cure PTSD? Why not just go to therapy?”Tony gives her a look. “Youwant to go to therapy?” Tony scoffs. “Besides. Like some doctor is going to know what to do about the fact that I have nightmares about aliens and wormholes.”“Okay,” says Natasha. “So you’re inventing the world’s next great therapy contraption. What did you want from me?”“Well." Tony turns back to the computer monitor in a movement that may or may not be to avoid her gaze. “It’s not working. Normally I’d ask Banner, but, well.” He huffs out a bitter laugh. “Besides, I hear you’re the one to ask about coding.”





	September

**Author's Note:**

> ADDITIONAL WARNING: Mentions of suicide (including a non-graphic depiction). No major character deaths.
> 
> Thank you to [queenofthepuddingbrains](http://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofthepuddingbrains) for beta, and to my many cheerleaders over the last ten months for encouraging me to stick with this and finish it! It's been a longtime in the making, but also one of the most fun things I've ever written.

Tony stays away for just over a month. 

It feels unusually quiet in the Compound, with both him and Clint away, though Sam’s banter makes up part of the difference. He and Steve get a new lead on Bucky at the end of August, yet another possible needle in the haystack, and are gone scarcely twelve hours later. Not that Natasha minds, per se. She’s got plenty of reading to catch up on. 

It’s going on one in the morning when she makes her way over to the lab complex, expecting to find everything shut down for the night. It’s not that she’s bored or unable to sleep--not if anyone’s asking, anyway--but that she’s over here to check on Helen Cho, who’s been working into the wee hours with concerning frequency since having the Mind Stone inside of her head. 

When Natasha sees the light at the end of the hall, her first thought is that Helen must be here again, that it’s probably time for a slightly hypocritical conversation about taking care of oneself. The Mind Stone is not free to inflict endless cruelties on her watch. She decided that two years ago. 

Natasha pauses in the hallway, listening. The room that’s occupied tonight isn’t one of the ones Helen’s used for previously-established experiments. In fact, the last time she checked, there wasn’t anything in it at all. That realization sends a ripple of suspicion through her, and for a moment she wonders if she ought to turn back and get a weapon. Then she tells herself that she’s being ridiculous; there isn’t going to be any sort of real threat hiding out in an Avengers lab at quarter to one on a Tuesday morning, and it’s not like she’d strictly _need_ a gun even if there were. 

The door is half-closed when she finally approaches it, mostly obscuring her view of the room inside. She takes a breath and pushes it open, deciding to forego the formality of knocking or announcing herself. The light in the lab is uncomfortably bright compared to the hallway and Natasha blinks through the sting of her pupils contracting. When her vision clears again, it reveals Tony, slumped over a desk in front of a monitor displaying unfamiliar code. There’s a shiny chrome mug abandoned to his right, a scummy film forming on the surface of the forgotten coffee inside.

She has a half-second of renewed concern, wondering if this is the scene of some attack or accident after all. But then she realizes that he’s snoring lightly, and her apprehension evaporates into annoyance. Typical Tony, working too late, and probably on the heels of several sleepless nights in a row. Probably she ought to let him sleep--he technically owns this entire facility, after all, it’s hardly like he owes rent--but she can’t resist the urge to at least investigate further, to attempt to decipher what it is he’s been working on so feverishly. _That_ particular impulse is half curiosity and half suspicion; if anyone’s proven the need for supervision in the past few months, it’s Tony Stark.

Approaching the desk triggers some sort of sensor, and a robot whirs to life, presumably ready to do her bidding. Tony jumps too at the sound, blinking up at her. “Romanoff?”

She rolls her eyes. “No, it’s my life model decoy.”

He scrubs a hand over his eyes and up through his hair, making it stick out in clumpy spikes. “Oh. In that case, it needs an updated door-knocking subroutine, because that thing just barged in here.”

“Funny,” Natasha retorts, not unkindly. “It’s almost like you’re working in a communal space with the door wide open. I must have missed the memo on those things meaning you wanted privacy.”

“It’s the middle of the night,” says Tony, yawning broadly. “I must have missed the memo on that meaning I wanted company. Let me guess. Cap send you to check up on me?”

“Please,” she scoffs, though in truth the question concerns her a bit. She’s accustomed to Tony being more on top of things than this, though she admittedly has no idea when he came back from the city, or his latest vacation with Pepper, or wherever it is that he’s been off decidedly _not_ Avenging. “He’s not even in the country. And besides, I only do my own dirty work these days. I’m a free agent.”

“Oh,” says Tony. “So _you’re_ checking up on me. Much better.”

Natasha sighs. “I wasn’t checking up.” That’s not entirely true, and she has a feeling that he’s intuitive enough to sense it, but it’s not exactly like either of them is being perfectly genuine right now. “Well, I wasn’t checking up on _you_. I wanted to make sure Helen wasn’t here.”

At that, he actually looks surprised, eyebrows creeping from the height of indignation to curiosity. “That’s a thing?”

“Yes.” She glances around the room again, noting that it’s mostly empty, save for several computers and an odd metallic array she doesn’t recognize. “Turns out that after you’ve had an Infinity Gem in your brain, sleep sounds a lot less palatable.”

He pauses for a moment, makes a face she can’t read before the familiar sarcasm returns. “Oh, that’s what that is? Glad to hear they’ve found the true cause of insomnia.”

“Nice try,” says Natasha. “You and your bad habits are still on the hook.’

He bristles at that, though in the moment she isn’t sure why, fails to read the atmosphere in the room. She’s used to watching criticism roll off Tony like water from a duck, but this particular barb strikes a nerve. “Then why don’t you leave me and my bad habits to it? You’re awake right now too, after all. Or are you here to confess that you’ve been secretly harboring one of those gems all along? Would explain a lot.”

“Fair point,” says Natasha, and leaves it at that, deciding she can come back and investigate later. Sometimes you learn more by choosing the right moment to walk away.

It isn’t until she gets back to her quarters that she remembers the screen full of code, and the fact that the majority of it was red, in error.

* * *

The house is quiet. 

The trail Steve and Sam are following is apparently long this time, because they’ve been gone for more than two weeks. Rhodey’s overseas conducting a training for the military, and Helen’s at a conference in London. Vision and Wanda are still at the compound, at least theoretically, but Natasha rarely sees them. She probably ought to check on how each of them is adjusting, she thinks, but for the moment that feels beyond her capabilities. For the moment, she has her doubts about how her own adjustment’s been going.

She’s in bed with a book--ostensibly reading, though she’s fairly certain she’s gone over the same page at least three times without really absorbing any of its content--when an explosion rocks the Compound and the lights in her quarters momentarily flicker off before the power is rerouted and manages to recover. 

“J.A.R.V.I.S.?” asks Natasha, out of habit, then catches herself a moment later. This isn’t the Tower, and the Compound doesn’t have an A.I. conveniently programmed to investigate strange noises--which is probably for the better, all things considered. 

Her heart is pounding, adrenaline singing through her veins as she slips out of bed, pulls on shoes and grabs the Glock she keeps concealed behind the headboard. 

The shockwave came from the next building over, she’s sure, which places it in the lab complex. Not terribly surprising, given the crew she currently lives with. On the other hand, the location doesn’t rule out a malicious attack of some sort, and an accident in this facility could be every bit as dangerous even if it wasn’t intentional. She’s read all the reports on the Hulk, after all. 

There’s a faint smell of smoke from the moment the retinal scanner reads her clearance and allows her in the door. The power is still off in here, and the hallway is illuminated by an eerie red glow of emergency lights. 

“Anybody home?” calls Natasha, clicking the safety off the gun and slowly making her way down the hall when there’s no response. 

There’s still no response, but it doesn’t take her long to find the source of the smoke. It’s pouring out from under the door of the lab space where she found Tony a few weeks ago, and as she approaches she can hear the faint sound of an alarm sounding. Probably ought to be louder, she thinks, judging by the amount of smoke that’s managing to escape through even the meager space.

Knowing Tony, she takes a half-second to wonder whether she ought to be wearing some sort of protective gear before barging into the scene of whatever this is, or perhaps ought to at least let someone else know what she’s doing. She’s always been one for the high-stakes game, though, and in the end her concern for--what, exactly, would she label Tony now? More than a colleague, not quite a friend--wins out over caution. She kicks the door open with one sharp blow and proceeds into the room, blinking against the smoke.

There isn’t any fire, as far as she can tell, but there is an electrical panel of some sort that’s smouldering impressively. Natasha thinks for a moment about finding a fire extinguisher to douse it definitively, but she doesn’t get to finish that line of action before her attention is drawn by the sight of Tony.

He’s slumped on the floor a few feet away, limbs splayed at odd angles that raise all sorts of _seizure_ alarm bells in the part of her brain that’s trained in field medicine. He’s wearing some kind of skull cap, she sees as she hurries to kneel beside him, covered in electrodes. There are wires attached, she realizes, and suddenly she feels a little sick as her gaze follows the path over to the console that’s still smoking. 

“Shit,” she breathes, sparing a moment only to feel for a pulse--irregular and too fast, but there--and confirm that he’s breathing before taking off in search of a phone to call an ambulance.

* * *

“Tony Stark Rushed to ER Following Severe Brain Trauma,” says Tony, who’s been awake since halfway through the ambulance ride and is now thoroughly displeased with his stay in the hospital’s curtained trauma bay. “Just the kind of press I need right now. Fantastic.”

“Since when do you care about press?” asks Natasha, arching a skeptical eyebrow.

Tony waves a hand at her, his voice a little slurred, the words coming just a hair too fast to sound completely normal. “I _don’t_ , strictly speaking, but Pepper does, and I care what she thinks, so fill in the blanks and the circle is complete.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you decided to--whatever you were doing,” says Natasha, sitting back in the flimsy folding chair one of the nurses graciously parked beside his stretcher.

“Science,” says Tony. “I was doing science. You know, just a little personal research project. Nothing that will affect the team, don’t worry. No permission slips for me to get signed.”

“And yet,” says Natasha, “it seems to me that the giant explosion in the middle of the Compound might have an effect. Woke me up, for one.”

“Oh!” He throws his hands up in the air dramatically, then grimaces when the movement apparently jostles his head a bit too much. “The horror.”

“You could have died,” she points out. “Or just scrambled your brains too badly to be an Avenger _or_ do science anymore.”

“The second one,” says Tony, “is definitely worse.”

Natasha crosses her arms, swallows down a flare of frustration and tries to remind herself that Tony is not good with vulnerability, never has been, covers it with ego and humor instead. That’s a factoid straight out of her very first assessment of him, though it does little to summon any measure of sympathy right now. 

“If I just ask what you were doing,” she asks, “what are the chances you’d be honest with me?”

Tony snorts. “About even odds of _you_ being honest with anyone, ever.”

“I hope your hair never grows back,” Natasha retorts, gesturing to the small burned spots that mar his scalp where the electrodes were attached. “There’s some honesty for you.”

Tony doesn’t get a chance to respond, because the doctor chooses that specific moment to come around the curtain with a verdict. “You’re very lucky, Mr. Stark. Head CT is normal, vitals are stable, and the results of your cognitive screening are encouraging on the whole. Looks like you’re going to skate by with a concussion and some superficial burns. This time. I cannot stress enough how important it is that you start taking better care of yourself. Use this accident as a wakeup call.”

“I promise you,” says Tony, in his most reassuring tone. “That is absolutely _not_ going to happen.”

* * *

Natasha vows to give Tony a wider berth after their unfortunate fieldtrip to the ER. Probably she ought to be watching him more closely, if she knows what’s good for her friends and her team. But she can’t quite escape the sting of his words, has had just about _enough_ of trying to support people who’d rather self-destruct. If Tony Stark is going to set himself on fire, she decides, she’s not going to be the one asphyxiating on the smoke.

Still, if there’s one thing she’s learned about being a part of this team, it’s that personal demons belong to them all. Probably she ought not to be surprised when she’s in the gym three days later and feels the subtle shift of the door opening. She’s on mile five of a rather satisfying run, but the Compound is still empty enough that she doesn’t ignore her instincts, steps off the treadmill and turns around to see who it is.

“Well,” says Tony, who is absolutely not dressed for a workout of any kind, “what a coincidence to find you here.”

“Sure.” Natasha crosses her arms. “Do you actually enjoy interfering with my routine or were you too worried that I’d feed you a cover story if you tried actually _asking_ when I’d be available for a chat?”

He folds his own arms over his chest, mirroring her stance, probably subconsciously. That particular piece of knowledge does absolutely nothing to make it less infuriating. “Who says I wanted to chat?”

She throws up her hands but bites her tongue, telling herself that she doesn’t care, that she is above a petty argument with a teammate, no matter how much Tony might have a way of getting under her skin. “Fine. Then I’m going back to my run.”

She’s back on the treadmill, about to crank up the speed again, when he decides to throw a curveball. 

“Wait.”

Natasha does as he’s asked, goes still for a long moment before turning around to face him again, eyebrow arched. “I’m waiting.”

“Okay.” He takes a breath, visibly steels himself, as if they might be preparing to spar. It’s an expression Natasha recognizes all too well, the one she’s learned to watch for during an interrogation. The one that means she’s about to win. 

“You ever feel--stuck?” He sighs. “Not, like--Not the kind of stuck you are when you’re trying to solve a problem and you haven’t worked it out yet. Stuck in the past. In all the bad things you ever did. In all the ways you could have stopped those things from happening, except that you didn’t. And each time you tell yourself that you’ve learned your lesson, that you’re going to do _better_ , but you don’t. You just keep making the same damn mistakes, over and over.”

“Yeah,” Natasha says evenly. “I think they made a movie about that. It’s called Groundhog Day.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Great. You know what? My bad. I showed you some of my squishy feelings. Should’ve known you wouldn’t be able to resist stomping all over them.” He turns to go.

“No,” she says to his back. “That wasn’t your bad. But you know what was? This thing you do, where you start to invite support, then turn around and take a jab at the person who’s trying to give it to you. Do you do that to everyone, or just me?”

He stops in his tracks, turns around to face her again. “Oh, I’m sorry. Just a little hard to trust someone who started off her relationship with you as _an entirely different person._ ”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she parrots, exaggerating his tone. “How terrible for you that I stopped you from killing yourself.”

“I didn’t ask you for help,” says Tony. “I didn’t ask anyone for help, yet everybody else seems to think they know what’s best for me.”

“Well,” says Natasha, “when your independent decisions have a way of getting people killed…”

Tony’s jaw hardens at that, and he takes a step closer again. “I don’t _get_ people killed. Every decision I make, _every_ decision has been to keep people safe!”

“Then it’s funny,” she presses, dimly aware that she’s crossing a line, but unable to stop herself at this point. Part cruel little reflex, part genuine hurt and anger. “Somehow disasters just follow you around. A few months ago, you blew up an entire city, in case you’d forgotten. And now here you are, back at it in the lab, not bothering to tell anyone what it is that you’re doing. How much longer before one of your experiments actually does get your whole team killed?”

Tony goes still at that, the change that’s been subtly washing over his face for the past few breaths now suddenly painfully apparent. 

“No,” he says softly, in a tone that can’t be read as anything other than naked desperation, perhaps the single most genuine syllable Natasha has ever heard come out of his mouth. “No, that’s not going to happen. I’m not going to let that happen.”

For a moment she isn’t sure how to respond, is equal parts shocked and horrified as she recognizes the clear signs of panic on his face. She’s seen it before, in Clint’s eyes, in Steve’s. In her own, if she’s honest with herself. She still hasn’t worked out what to say when he seems to find his momentum, turns to walk out the door for the third time. 

“Wait,” says Natasha, finding her voice because she’s sure she doesn’t want to discover the consequences of simply letting this remain unresolved, of letting him walk away to go back to whatever this is on his own. “Tony. Were you trying to kill yourself? In the lab the other night?”

“If I wanted to do that, you think I’d need a fancy experimental rig?” Tony throws up his hands, panic apparently rolling over into incredulity when she doesn’t immediately respond. “No! Of course not!”

Natasha crosses her arms, studies him. “Okay. Not suicidal, for the moment. Just electrocuting yourself in the lab and coming in here to ramble to me about remembering the worst things you’ve ever done. Tell me what conclusion you’d reach.”

He sucks in a breath, then blows it back out slowly, with a force that might be frustration or might be resignation. Or possibly a bit of both. Knowing Tony, it’s both. “Fine. Fine, maybe you have a point. But I wasn’t trying to kill myself. Believe it or not, actually scrambling my brain is not my idea of a good time.”

She nods. “Okay. So, despite the conclusions we may both be prone to jumping to, it seems to me that you actually did come in here to tell me something.”

“Yeah,” says Tony. “Funnily enough, it was going to be about the actual point of the thing that tried to turn me into a vegetable the other night.”

“‘Was going to be’?” Natasha echoes.

He sighs again. “Yeah, well, now that I think about it, it’s kind of hard to describe. Maybe you’d like to come and see?”

* * *

Tony--or more likely his robots--has cleaned up most of the mess from the disaster in the lab, but the space still smells vaguely of scorched rubber and smoke. There’s an odd familiarity about the scent, and it takes a moment before Natasha realizes that it reminds her of the way Clint’s workbench sometimes smells when he’s been working on new arrowheads. 

Currently the lab’s contents consist of a large open space flanked by half a dozen of what appear to be cameras, a desk at the far end with a keyboard and several computer monitors, and the skull cap of electrodes that landed Tony in the ER. Natasha can’t help thinking the thing looks a bit like a torture device, though she’s aware such technology has perfectly legitimate medical and scientific uses. Then again, that line’s always seemed a bit blurry in her mind. Unfortunate--or fortunate, depending on your interests--side effect of being raised a killer. 

“This is all one project?” asks Natasha, watching as Tony sits at the desk and powers up the computer. There isn’t a second chair, but she doesn’t feel much like sitting at the moment anyway. She’s seen his lab space plenty of times before, knows his penchant for multi-tasking. She’s practically come to expect him to have at least a handful of things going at any given moment. 

He nods, surprising her. “You got it.”

She takes a step closer, rests her hip against the edge of the desk as she watches him type, the commands sending code scrawling down the screen like a little digital cityscape coming to life before her eyes. “And you’re going to show me what it is.”

He pauses, spins in his chair so that he’s facing her again. He has to look up to meet her gaze, for once. “First I’m going to tell you. Then I’m going to show you. I hope.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

“I told you,” says Tony, “that I’ve been thinking about how we tend to repeat our mistakes. All of us, by the way, not just me. Part of the human condition, or something.”

“Yes, humans make mistakes,” says Natasha, starting to get impatient again. “Go on.”

“We think that by reminding ourselves of the bad things we’ve done, we’ll avoid doing them again, right?” he asks. “Or at least, that’s what all our high school history teachers wanted us to believe.”

“Right,” she allows, mostly because she wants him to continue. So far he’s done nothing to assuage the skepticism she feels toward the whole mess of equipment. 

“But what if it’s the opposite?” asks Tony. “What if, the more we think about our mistakes, the more we try to avoid them, the more likely we are to fall right back into that exact same pattern? I mean, that’s what Maximoff did to all of us, right? Turned us into our own worst nightmares just by reminding us of what those nightmares _were_.”

“So that’s what this is about,” says Natasha, as the pieces fall into place. It makes sense, now that she thinks about it. “Wanda got in your head, freaked you out, so now you’re trying to--What, make some kind of personal telepathy shield?”

He shakes his head. “Actually no. Although that’s not a bad idea, either. At least in theory. Not so sure I could make something effective against an Infinity Gem, though. Might take more than ten minutes, and we all know that’s the extent of my attention span.”

“Self-deprecation?” Natasha arches an eyebrow, aware that she’s pushing his buttons again but enjoying it too much to resist. “Man, she really _did_ do a number on you.”

“It’s not about Wanda,” says Tony. “Well, actually it sort of is, but it’s not _just_ about Wanda. Not exclusively. Because, that’s the thing. She didn’t create vulnerabilities in us, she just exploited the ones that were already there. You can try and shield those vulnerabilities all you want, but eventually someone’s going to find a way in again. Someone’s going to find a way to hack that system. So what do you do if you discover a vulnerability that’s too dangerous to just patch?”

Natasha shrugs. “You try to eliminate it.” She pauses, another thought occurring to her, immediately followed by dread. “You’re not trying to erase memories, are you? Because I don’t think I need to go over all the reasons I’m not going to let that continue if you are.”

“Not the memories,” he says quickly. “Our reaction to them. Take away their emotional power and maybe they are exactly what we want them to be -- Just reminders of what not to do again.”

She studies him for a long moment, trying to decide whether she believes this last assertion. “So basically you’re trying to make an invention to cure PTSD? Why not just go to therapy?”

He gives her a look. “ _You_ want to go to therapy?” Tony scoffs. “Besides. Like some doctor is going to know what to do about the fact that I have nightmares about aliens and wormholes.”

“Okay,” says Natasha, though she still can’t quite keep the incredulity out of her voice. “So you’re inventing the world’s next great therapy contraption. What did you want from me?”

“Well,” says Tony, turning back to the computer monitor in a movement that may or may not be to avoid her gaze. “It’s not working. Normally I’d ask Banner, but, well.” He huffs out a bitter laugh. “Besides, I hear you’re the one to ask about coding.”

* * *

“The previous version worked.”

Natasha looks up from the screen of code she’s been reading for the past half hour, the room taking a second to come into focus. Tony’s been pacing the room while she’s been examining the errors, trying to make sense of what the program’s supposed to accomplish. It feels a little like trying to read foreign writing, though the language and syntax themselves are familiar to her. The eccentricity is more in the way Tony’s put the pieces together, the way his mind makes logic.

“What do you mean ‘worked,’?” she asks, after she’s taken a moment to register what he’s said. “If it worked, then why do you need me?”

“It _ran_ ,” Tony amends. “It didn’t error out like the new one has been. But it didn’t serve its purpose, either.”

“Okay.” Natasha pushes the chair back and spins it around to face him. “Do you still have that code saved somewhere?”

He gives her a disdainful look. “Of course. What do I look like to you?”

She arches an eyebrow. “A man who has very little regard for lab safety or standardized methods when he’s working.”

Tony snorts. “Okay, fair. But I do have it saved. I have all the versions saved. F.R.I.D.A.Y. does it for me.”

“I want you to show it to me,” says Natasha. “Not the code itself. A demonstration of the code. I want to see exactly what it does, and then I want you to tell me how it needs to be different. Because this?” She gestures toward the screen that’s now behind her. “This is a mess.”

Tony makes a face at her. “Hey. Don’t call my baby names.”

Natasha crosses her arms. “Tony.”

“The last version was substantially different,” he insists, and she gets the distinct impression that he’s backpedaling at the request for a demonstration. “It’s really not the goal anymore.”

“ _Tony,_ ” she repeats. “Do you want my help or not?”

He sighs. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

She gets to her feet. “Then you’re going to do what I need you to do in order for this to actually be productive. Now, please show me a demonstration of the last set of code.”

Tony hesitates for another moment, then takes a deep breath. “F.R.I.D.A.Y.?”

“Here, Boss,” comes the brisk voice from the speaker that still seems as though it ought to be occupied by J.A.R.V.I.S. “Loading file, ‘BARF failure #311.’”

Natasha blinks, stifling a laugh at Tony’s immediate look of chagrin. Clearly this is what he’s been trying to avoid in balking at the demonstration in the first place.

She clears her throat. “Two questions.”

“BARF is the name of the project,” Tony interrupts. “Well. The acronym of the project, really. It stands for Binarily Augmented Retro Framing.”

“Classy,” says Natasha.

“Your second question?” he prompts, moving toward the setup at the other end of the lab, where he’d ended up unconscious the previous night.

She follows him cautiously. “You’ve been working on this for, what, a month? And you’ve already managed to fail 311 times?”

Tony gives her a bitter little smile before taking a seat in the chair and beginning to apply electrodes to his own head. “What, you haven’t noticed I’m great at fuck-ups?”

“I didn’t request a demonstration of self-flagellation,” says Natasha, not quite able to swallow down her discomfort as Tony finishes securing the skull cap and begins tinkering with things on the control panel.

“Almost there,” he says distractedly, flipping a switch that makes the monitor turn on, showing a readout Natasha can only infer must be his brain waves.

She takes half a step back, mentally gauging the distance between herself and the exit, calculating the shortest route to calling for help in the event of disaster. “If you electrocute yourself again, I’m going to kill you. If you electrocute us both, I’ll haunt you for eternity.”

“Don’t worry,” says Tony, closing his eyes. “Not maxing out any power levels tonight. Just a plain old boring demonstration. Now, if you could stop talking for a minute, and observe the beauty that isn’t.”

Natasha falls silent as he’s requested, watching as a look of concentration crosses his features, the display changing subtly. She realizes now that the other parts of the setup are holographic projectors, which now whirr into life, emitting a diffuse white glow. For a moment it stays just like that, almost painfully bright to look at, then begins swirling into something darker, trying to coalesce into a definitive form. She holds her breath as the image wavers in and out, just on the edge of being identifiable. Then, all at once, it fades to white again, as though any particular purpose it might have had has left the room. A blank slate again, waiting for direction it’s never fully achieved.

Tony sighs, opens his eyes, and hits the switch to shut the whole thing down. “And there you have it. The closest this thing’s been to running.”

Natasha studies him as he pulls the electrodes back off in frustration, wincing when some of them take a few hairs along with the adhesive. She notices for the first time today how worn he’s looking, how brittle, how she’s fairly sure he’s been losing weight in addition to sleep.

“Okay,” she says finally, which somehow makes Tony jump a little. “I want you to tell me what that was supposed to be doing. But we’re not going to do it here.”

* * *

“What is this?” asks Tony, as he comes into the kitchen. “What are you doing?”

She’s made him leave the lab long enough to take a shower, and now he looks uncharacteristically soft, in a wrinkled t-shirt and sweats. 

Natasha glances up from the spices she’s just finished measuring into a bowl, and nods toward the chairs at the breakfast bar. “Dinner.”

Tony hooks a foot through the legs of a chair, pulls it out roughly and sits in it, wincing. If anything, the changes of venue and clothes have made him look even more exhausted. “Dinner? Where’s dinner?”

“This,” says Natasha, gesturing to the ingredients she has set out on the counter -- eggs, spices, sliced bread, maple syrup, “is dinner. Or going to be dinner soon.”

His eyebrows climb toward the ceiling. “You. Cooking. Really?”

She pours a second mug from the pot of tea she’s made for herself and sets it in front of him, aware that he’ll probably think she’s lost it entirely. “Me. Cooking. Really. What did you think I did for food, kidnapped and coerced a private chef?”

Tony shrugs, picking up the mug and eying it suspiciously, breathing in the chamomile-scented steam, then setting it back down again without drinking any. “I don’t know, maybe I thought you ate knives for dinner.”

“French toast,” says Natasha, taking a sip of her own tea before cracking eggs into the bowl and beginning to whisk the mixture. “No knives included.”

“Breakfast for dinner?” he questions, leaning forward so that he can see over the counter.

She moves the bowl so that he can watch while she whisks, and so that she can meet his eyes while they’re talking. “Comfort food. For when your current mission just isn’t cooperating.”

He studies her in silence for a moment longer, then takes a sip of his tea. “I like breakfast for dinner too.”

Natasha offers him a smug little smile. “I know. Pepper told me.”

Tony wrinkles his nose, but he doesn’t look too entirely displeased with this information. “Cheater.”

“She’s my friend,” Natasha says mildly. She picks up the bread and starts it soaking in the egg mixture. “I should thank you for introducing us. And maybe you should put a little more trust in her taste.”

He sighs, drinking more tea. “So. You wanted to interrogate me.”

“I wanted you to explain,” she amends, moving the bread to the frying pan where she’s been melting butter on the stove. “I saw your code. I saw it not working. Tell me how you want it to work. The mechanisms, not the purpose.”

“Okay.” Tony sets the mug down, drawing an idle line on the counter with one index finger. “So. In a perfect world, my program would interface with the brain. It would be able to search, automatically find the traumatic memories, and bring them to life, for you to interact with. Then you could--I don’t know, change the memory? Work through it? Something. You could revisit it, at least.”

She nods thoughtfully, turning the toast. “And what part did I see in the lab today?”

He winces. “The first part. The searching. That’s the big bad problem hurdle right now.”

“How is your algorithm supposed to work?” she asks, listening to the butter and egg mixture sizzling softly. “How do you make a search engine for memories?”

“We don’t exactly know where memories are stored in the brain.” He makes a smug face. “I don’t know what the _entire field_ of neuroscience has been doing if they haven’t solved _that_ one by now, but anyway. What we do know is _how_ memories are stored. The first time we experience something, a bunch of neurons fire, right? That’s how our thoughts work. Just a bunch of neurons, shooting their loads.”

Natasha makes a disgusted back face at him. “I could do without the graphic imagery, thanks.”

“Buzzkill.” Tony drains the last of the tea from his mug, then reaches over the counter and snags the pot to pour himself a refill. “Okay. So. Neurons, firing together when we have a thought, or an experience, or anything, really. Then, the next time we have that experience, or even just _think_ about having that experience, those same neurons fire together again. And again, and again, ad infinitum. Every time they fire together, the connections between them get stronger. So what would you expect from a memory that you’d been replaying in your head, over and over again, for years?”

“Really strong connections,” says Natasha, flipping the toast out onto two plates and handing the first to Tony, along with the bottle of maple syrup.

He nods, scrutinizes the toast for a moment, then practically drowns it in syrup. She watches as he picks up a fork, takes a bite, and then makes a soft sound of approval. “Jesus, that’s good.”

Natasha smirks at him as she brings her own plate and mug over, taking the seat beside him. “Don’t look so surprised.”

He takes another bite, apparently momentarily lost in the act of eating.

“So,” she prompts. “Your search algorithm would be looking for especially strong connections between neurons. How?”

Tony swallows, takes a gulp of tea. “The idea is to stimulate various neural networks throughout the brain, then statistically analyze the responses, choose the one with the response pattern that’s most different from all the others.”

Natasha blinks at him. “You’re trying to create an algorithm to stimulate _every_ neural network in the brain?”

He winces. “Yeah, that was my brilliant plan. You see the problem?”

She nods as she chews a piece of her own toast. “It’s practically an infinite number of combinations. Do we even know the limits?”

He shakes his head. “No. Plus, the user gets to experience the pleasure of all those memories in rapid-fire while the damn thing tries to analyze them.”

For once, she gives him a look of sympathy. No wonder he looks as close to the edge as he does right now. “And tell me how that led to you practically frying your brain the other night?”

He looks sheepish. “More power, work better?” He shrugs and stabs another piece of toast with his fork. “In my defense, I was very tired.”

“Okay,” says Natasha. “Clearly we’re going to need to rethink this design. And do more research. But for tonight, you’re going to bed. And from now on, I’m the safety committee.”

* * *

The residential building is quiet when Natasha emerges from her quarters in the morning, though it’s just barely dawn outside. For a few minutes she holds out hope that Tony is still asleep, finally catching up on much-needed rest. But then she reaches the kitchen, sees that the lights are on and there’s something sitting in the middle of the counter, which she clearly recalls cleaning off the night before.

Getting closer, she sees that there’s an iced green tea latte from the coffee shop a couple miles up the road. There’s a gift bag, too, and she eyes it suspiciously for a moment. She takes a sip of the drink -- minimally sweet, the way she usually orders it for herself -- and then plucks the decorative tissue paper off the top of the bag. Inside, there’s a dark green t-shirt, folded neatly in on itself. Natasha sets the latte down and shakes out the shirt, which says ‘Safety Committee’ in official-looking lettering across the chest.

She snorts, then slips it on over her tanktop before heading toward the lab.

* * *

Tony already has the electrode skull cap on when she arrives at the lab, though the power to it doesn’t seem to activated yet. Instead there’s a holographic display of what Natasha can only assume is the latest version of the project code floating in the air in front of him. From the doorway, it looks like he’s simply waving a hand at it, almost as though he’s conducting an imaginary symphony. For a moment she worries that he’s managed to fry his brain again, or perhaps simply had a full break with reality as a result of sleep deprivation. But as she comes closer, she realizes that he’s using the holographic equivalent of a stylus, marking up the glowing code with his fingers.

“Neat trick,” says Natasha, mostly to make sure he’s aware of her presence. “Did you actually sleep at all?”

“Yes,” he answers lightly, without turning around, still making notes to himself. “At all.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “When did you make the shirt?”

He does glance over his shoulder then, offering her a little self-satisfied smile. “I didn’t. The ‘bots did. Looks good on you, though.”

“Thanks.” She strikes her best model pose for a moment, smugly noting the way that his eyes widen. “So, you want to tell me what you’re working on this morning?”

“Same thing,” says Tony. “Well, sort of. Still stuck at Step One in the process.”

“Finding the memory you want the program to interface with,” says Natasha. She pulls a rolling chair away from one of the desks at the far end of the lab and sits in it beside Tony, scanning the code quickly. She finds that she still can’t quite understand the way he’s put it together, can recognize elements of it, but can’t follow his reasoning as far as how it’s intended to function as a whole.

He nods. “I was thinking about this last night. You know, while I was sleeping.” He smirks at Natasha sideways, a half-hearted challenge. When she declines to take the bait, he continues. “There are actually _two_ problems to this problem.”

“Yes?” Natasha prompts, wishing that he’d do away with the bravado, just discuss the issue at hand. But then he wouldn’t be Tony Stark, she thinks.

“The first problem is sensitivity. You have to find a way to consider all relevant possibilities, and have parameters wide enough that they don’t exclude the neural network you’re interested in. _We’re_ interested in.” He glances over at Natasha, makes sure she’s still following before he continues. “The second problem is specificity. How do you discriminate between all the possibilities to get just the one that you want? Right now we’re failing both problems, because we’re just comparing each response, each synapse firing, to all of the others. We’re only looking at results, there’s no pre-determined limits of what we’re going to consider.”

Natasha nods slowly, letting his rapid-fire delivery sink in. “So, you’re thinking of some kind of threshold? Something that would be sensitive enough to avoid falsely excluding the memory that you want, but specific enough that you can just stimulate a certain number of networks, rather than all the infinite combinations. What kind of marker are you going to use? How do you differentiate between neurons without stimulating them to begin with?”

Tony grins. “I’m so glad you asked.” He turns back to the holo display, flicks up an article he’s apparently been reading. “I did some research on neuroplasticity. You know, the way synapses change when they’re getting used all the time. You know what happens when a neuron fires all the time?”

She narrows her eyes, recognizing the smug expression on his face. “I have a feeling this is going to be colorful.”

“It releases more neurotransmitter.” He gives her a triumphant look. “Extra neuron jizz.”

“If you don’t watch it,” says Natasha, “I’m going to shut this operation down. You did make me a committee.”

“I made you a shirt,” Tony amends.

“I thought the robots did that,” she retorts. “Now, why don’t you tell me how you’re planning to use this new knowledge to find your problem memory?”

“Easy.” Tony smirks, leaning forward in his chair and switching on the power to the array. The holographic code he’s been editing glows green for a moment, then the image dissipates into the same diffuse white Natasha recognizes from the previous day’s demonstration. “You target the neurons with the extra jizz. Stimulate those, get memory. I hope. Shall we give it a whirl?”

“What if I said no?” asks Natasha, mostly to see what he’ll do.

He shrugs. “This. F.R.I.D.A.Y., run script. Now.”

She opens her mouth to protest, but it’s already too late. All she can do is step backward, pushing her chair out of the way, as the electrodes begin their interface with Tony’s brain. The white glow begins to coalesce into an image almost immediately, no swirling fog like last time. The look of concentration on Tony’s face turns to elation as he watches it happen, and for one brief moment, Natasha thinks he might actually have done it, might have solved the problem without her help after all. 

But then the projection resolves fully, and suddenly she recognizes what it is: a mirror image of the other half of the room they’re in, creating an eerie sense of disorientation as she sees the desk, computer monitor, and screen full of code that she knows in reality are behind her.

“What the hell?” breathes Tony. “F.R.I.D.A.Y., what is it doing?”

“What you asked, boss,” comes her voice. “Stimulating the neuronal pathway with the markers for most recent plasticity.”

“Tony,” says Natasha, as the pieces fit together in her mind and she realizes their mistake. “What have you been thinking about the most, recently?”

“This project,” he breathes, as she sees the realization on his face too. “Dammit.”

* * *

The next plan of attack is to stimulate different areas within the brain, in the hopes of eventually narrowing it down enough to find something of use. Which, it turns out, is easier said than done. 

“Brains are weird,” says Tony, as he surveys the three-dimensional model of one currently hanging holographically in the air in front of them. He’s wearing the electrodes again, too, though she’s at least convinced him to wait a day before trying again after their last failure.

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “You’re just realizing this now?”

He sighs. “I mean. I knew they were weird. Hell, Maximoff showed us all just _how_ weird brains can be. I just didn’t know they were _this_ kind of weird. Physically weird.”

“Yes,” she says dryly. “Kind of squishy.”

Tony gives her a look that verges on horror. “Are you saying that from firsthand experience?”

“Yes, poking brains is totally one of my kinks,” she deadpans, then rolls her eyes. “No. Jesus, Tony.”

He shudders. “Great. Thank you so much for that mental image. I’m never going to be able to un-see it.”

She grins. “You’re welcome. That was for the ‘neuron jizz.’”

“Huh,” says Tony, looking at her thoughtfully. “How come nobody’s warned me about your sense of humor?”

Natasha shrugs. “Maybe most people like it?”

“I didn’t say I’m not one of them,” he allows.

“You make a decision on coordinates yet?” she asks, wondering suddenly whether he’s stalling. 

“No.” Tony sighs. “Okay, fine. So...the area we want is probably somewhere in either the fear center or the hippocampus, right?”

Natasha nods; she’s been reading articles on this too, though it’s a steep learning curve, catching up to Tony’s weeks-long fevered obsession. 

“I guess let’s just start at 0, 0, 0,” says Tony, finally sounding somewhat decisive. “Then we’ll move out--What’s the term of going toward the ears?”

“Laterally,” Natasha supplies.

“Right. Laterally.” Tony adjusts the skull cap on his head, sticks one of the electrodes onto his scalp a little more firmly. He’s using the spots where the electricity singed his hair away a few nights ago, which is equal parts smart and disconcerting. “F.R.I.D.A.Y.?”

“Yes, boss. Running code.”

“I’ll just be over here,” says Natasha, taking half a step backward. “Waiting by the defibrillator.”

“Hilarious,” says Tony, as the electrodes whir into life again, the light emitted by the projectors in its default soft white state.

For a moment it seems as though nothing is happening, as though it’s going to be yet another anticlimactic failure in which the stimulation fails to produce any sort of meaningful result.

Then Tony jumps up out of his seat, as though he’s been shocked by a cattle prod. “Ow!”

“You okay?” asks Natasha, wondering suddenly how to abort this thing, whether she’d need to do anything other than ask F.R.I.D.A.Y. to override it, if necessary.

“Ow!” he yelps again, swatting at his arms. “Ow! _Ow!_ ”

“Tony,” she says sharply. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“Shit!” he barks, then tears the skull cap off his head, the adhesive from the electrodes bringing a few more wisps of hair with it. “F.R.I.D.A.Y., shut it down already!”

“Was the power too high again?” asks Natasha, as the projector goes dim. “Did it shock you?”

“No.” He shakes his head, pats down his arms as though he needs to be sure there’s nothing on his skin. “No, I mean--It _felt_ like an electric shock, but I don’t think it was. I think it must have--We hit the pain center in my brain? I think?”

“Well,” says Natasha, not quite willing to let him see the level of relief she’s feeling, “you _did_ want pain, didn’t you? Just not so much the physical kind.”

Tony rolls his eyes, clearly frustrated. “Glad this is entertaining for you.”

She sighs. “Well, in my official role as Safety Committee, I don’t recommend hurting yourself.”

He looks down at the skull cap in his hand, the electrodes dangling limply from it, as if they might have lost some life of their own. “Damn. Time for a new set of these, I guess. Pretty sure this one’s shot.”

* * *

“F.R.I.D.A.Y.,” says Natasha, examining the holographic brain model again as Tony hooks up the new set of electrodes, then carefully adheres them to his scalp. “Let’s try moving ten millimeters posterior, and ten lateral. Toward the left.”

“Got it,” says F.R.I.D.A.Y., without any question.

Tony glances up, looking slightly surprised. “Just like that? She’s the boss now?”

“She’s the one studying the diagram,” says F.R.I.D.A.Y., a shrug practically audible in her tone. “Sometimes it’s good to get another perspective, Boss.”

He sighs. “You want to tell me what you’re trying, Romanoff? Or did you just want to use me as your guinea pig and let me find out?”

Natasha crosses her arms. “I seem to recall you made yourself the guinea pig. And we’re aiming for the limbic system, right? Probably the hippocampus? So we need to go deeper, and further away from the midline.”

Tony waggles his eyebrows at her. “Yes, please. Take me deeper.”

She doesn’t dignify that with a response. “F.R.I.D.A.Y., run script.”

He’s still on his feet this time when the electrodes come to life, the holographic projector emitting its usual white glow. Natasha wonders if she ought to make him sit down, if she ought to have asked him whether he was ready, but it’s too late for that now.

“Taco,” says Tony, the syllables leaving his lips in gunshot staccato. The projectors stay the same. He blinks. “Taco? No. Taco! _No._ Duck!”

“Tony?” Natasha asks warily. He looks confused, but he doesn’t seem to be in pain or otherwise distressed.

“Duck!” he says again, then shakes his head, like he might be trying to dislodge the words from it. The wires from the electrodes flap around wildly. “ _Taco!_ ”

“You okay?” she presses, though it’s become entirely clear that whatever’s happening is related to the brain stimulation. “Do you want to stop?”

He screws his eyes shut for a moment, an expression of intense focus settling over his features before he looks at her again. “Tornado neon muzzle taco!” He balls his hand into a fist, practically growls in frustration.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y., abort,” says Natasha, because it’s painfully obvious that Tony isn’t going to be able to say that on his own. 

“Fuck,” he breathes, as the power drains away again. “Fuck, that was weird.” He’s shaking, almost imperceptibly.

“How about we take a coffee break?” Natasha suggests, resting a hand on his arm. 

“You don’t drink coffee,” he points out, though he doesn’t brush her off. “But okay.”

* * *

As it turns out, they don’t try again until the next day. 

Natasha’s begun to wonder just how long the rest of the team will be gone this time, and what will happen to their project if they don’t finish it before the others return. She can’t focus too much on that right now, though, when Tony’s just initiated the code for their newest test run. 

The projection remains indistinct again, still the blank white glow that Natasha thinks she’ll probably be having stress dreams about months from now. Tony glances at her from his now-familiar seat in the middle of the rig, rolls his eyes and starts to say something. 

Then, all at once, the corners of his lips twitch and he stops dead. 

For a moment she worries that they’ve somehow hit the language center again, that he’s about to start spouting more gibberish in a panic. Instead, his mouth curves into a smile, oddly small and demure at first, then growing into a full on shit-eating grin. 

“What?” asks Natasha, wondering why there’s still nothing happening with the projection when he’s clearly reacting to _something_. 

He doesn’t respond in words, instead begins to chuckle. It starts in the back of his throat, just a quick puff of air, scarcely a vibration of his vocal cords. For a moment she even thinks she’s mistaken, that maybe he’s just clearing his throat, trying to come up with words to answer her query. But then it evolves into an unmistakable giggle, the sort of outright goofiness that Tony would never allow of himself, save for cases of considerable intoxication. Or, apparently, whatever this is.

“Tony,” she says warily, wondering again whether she ought to put a stop to the experiment, whether he’s somehow attached the electrodes wrong, whether that’s the reason that there isn’t a projection so far.

His giggling turns into a full-on laugh, a convulsive cackle that forces him to take huge gasping breaths in between. He slides out of the chair, almost as if in slow motion, tears of mirth pouring down his face as he lands on the floor in a heap, pounding it helplessly with one hand as he continues to howl.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y.,” Natasha says finally, making an executive decision, “abort.”

The rig goes dark, but Tony continues laughing for a few moments longer, finally going still as he catches his breath.

“What the hell was that?” asks Natasha, when he looks halfway sane again.

Tony shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know, but damn, it was awesome.”

“So, what, we hit some kind of euphoria spot?”

He waggles his eyebrows, giggles again. “Gives new meaning to the g-spot.”

She gives him a skeptical look. “Sure you don’t want to just call it quits, then, and market your invention like this?”

He shakes his head, a bit ruefully. “If only.”

* * *

“Okay,” says Tony, who appears to be trying his best to be optimistic, despite the half-dozen tests they’ve completed with only painfully slow progress. They _are_ getting somewhere, Natasha thinks, they just happen to be inching toward it rather than running or even crawling. 

“Yes?” she prompts, watching him swap out the adhesive patches on the electrodes for yet another round. At this rate, he’s going to end up with permanent bald spots on his head. Then again, maybe a fix for that can be his next project.

“I think,” says Tony, “that we are definitely getting closer to the limbic system. Of which the hippocampus is a part.”

“Yes,” she says dryly. “I looked at the diagrams too. And yes, if you keep throwing enough spaghetti noodles at the wall, eventually something is going to stick.”

He feigns a look of hurt. “Agent Romanoff, are you saying that my methods are crude?”

She rolls her eyes. “I’m not an agent anymore and you know it. Also, when I _see_ an actual method, I’ll let you know what I think of it.”

Tony shakes his head. “Cold.” He sits in what she’s come to think of as his test-chair, deftly sticks the electrodes onto his scalp. “Ready?”

Natasha crosses her arms. “You asking me or yourself?”

He doesn’t dignify that with a direct response. “F.R.I.D.A.Y., run script.”

This time the change is immediate and obvious, the projector skipping the vague-white-glow phase entirely and resolving into a sharp holographic scene. Natasha blinks, surprised first at the fact that they’ve managed to get anything so vivid at all, and then by the actual content in front of her.

The lab has been transformed into an office, which she recognizes a moment later as belonging to Stark Industries. It’s dark outside the illusion of the windows, the New York skyline bright. In front of the desk stands Pepper, in a smart blazer and heels...and not much else, save for a tiny, lacy thong. She has a wicked-looking riding crop in one hand, and a print-out of a graph in the other.

“Mr. Stark,” she says sternly, taking a step forward, “you’ve been very naughty. Your productivity is _way_ down.”

“Abort!” Tony yelps, ripping the skullcap off so roughly and abruptly that two of the electrodes break free and go skittering across the room. His face is beet red. “Abort, abort, abort immediately!”

Natasha can’t quite help the smirk that spoils her poker face.

* * *

It takes her a surprisingly long time to find Tony when she wants him. He isn’t in the lab, for once, or the gym, and there’s no answer when she knocks on the door to his quarters. She wonders whether he might simply be ignoring her, either sulking or too embarrassed to show his face after the afternoon’s display. When she does finally find him, it’s by chance, walking by the communal laundry room on her way to the kitchen and happening to hear one of the machines running.

She pauses in the doorway, mildly surprised to see Tony standing by one of the dryers and folding shirts. “Hi.”

He glances up, studies her. “What’s that look about?”

Natasha shrugs. “I don’t know, just don’t usually see you in here. And I don’t think I ever saw you do laundry at the Tower.”

“What did you think?” he asks, though his tone is more teasing than confrontational. “That I sent all my laundry out or that I just wore disposable clothes?”

“Maybe I thought you had a robot,” she suggests, though the truth is that she really hasn’t spent much time contemplating the logistics of Tony’s wardrobe.

“Fair,” he allows. “You come here to look at my underwear? Didn’t get enough of my dirty laundry earlier?” He holds up a pair of red silk boxers, waves them in her face as if to prove his point.

“I had a thought,” says Natasha, snatching the boxers out of his hands and folding them neatly to add to his stack.

He blinks, apparently taken aback by her nonchalance. “Oh?”

“I think we’re trying to do the impossible.” She moves to stand beside him, grabbing the next few articles of clothing out of the dryer and handing half to him, keeping the rest to fold herself. “This idea of designing an algorithm to find one specific memory and trigger it? It’s unrealistic. We don’t know enough about the way memory works in order to do that. Nobody does. Not without years of research and probably a bunch of education you and I don’t have.”

Tony pauses, a shirt wadded in one hand, sure to be getting wrinkled. “So, what, are you suggesting that we give up?” He’s already bristling. “Spoiler alert: I’m not going to do that.”

“Not give up on the project,” Natasha says carefully, putting together a pair of socks and setting them aside. “Just on this part. On the identification algorithm.”

“Then what?” he presses. “How the hell is it supposed to work if we don’t have the algorithm? That’s why it’s not working right now.”

“No, _that part_ isn’t working,” she answers evenly, “and we’ve been so focused on _that part_ that we haven’t even thought about how the rest could maybe work without it.”

“It _can’t,_ ” Tony snaps, uncharacteristically short. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“It can,” she insists calmly. “Think about it. Why do we need the program to find the memories we’re targeting? Why can’t we show it?”

“What, like draw it a picture?” he mocks, clearly frustrated.

“Like,” says Natasha, “think of the memory on your own. Let the interface work on the thing you’re voluntarily recalling. Eliminates the need for any kind of search.”

“Also eliminates the entire point of the project,” he growls, apparently abandoning his folding as he sweeps the entire heap of laundry into a basket and makes his way toward the door. “Should have known you’d be useless.”

* * *

It’s hours after dinner, nearly ten, when the knock comes on Natasha’s door. She isn’t asleep yet, but she is curled up in bed, engrossed enough in a book that the sound makes her jump. It’s quieter than she’s used to from the others here, almost like her visitor is hoping she might not respond.

Tony looks the most contrite she’s ever seen him when she opens the door, definitely has his metaphorical tail between his legs. That doesn’t stop him from looking her curiously up and down, though, taking in the t-shirt and loose knit pants that she’s wearing to sleep in. “Huh.”

Natasha gives him a look. “Let me guess. You thought I slept naked. Or else in very sexy lingerie at all times.”

“No,” he says firmly. “Black leather. Hanging upside down. Like a bat.”

“Oh,” she deadpans, stepping back to let him into her room. “You caught me.”

Tony sighs, then takes a slow breath. “I was a dick to you earlier.”

“Yeah,” she allows, sitting on the bed and motioning for him to join her. It feels like an odd conversation to be having while standing by the door, like he might flee again at any moment.

He hesitates, then sits, just barely perched at the edge of the mattress, like he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself in her personal space. “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” says Natasha, aware that apologies don’t come easily to him. 

He plunges forward, the words coming out in a rush, like he’s afraid of what will happen if he allows them to slow down or stop. “You’re right, okay? You’re right. I know that you’re right, I know that it can work the way you were suggesting. I just don’t like it.”

“What, you don’t like the idea of voluntarily having to recall your worst memories?” she asks dryly.

“Shockingly no.”

“But that’s the whole point of the project, right?” she asks. “When you get right down to it, the purpose is to not only recall your worst moments, but actually interact with them. So what’s wrong with thinking of it on your own?”

“It could work, logistically,” Tony admits. “There’s a compromise--Think about it the first time, really focus on it intently, to teach the program what that looks like. Let it read the brain’s activation patterns, so that it can interface with them in the future. You wouldn’t even have to do the whole--remembering on your own part more than once. It sounds perfect.”

“But?” she prompts, because she can hear the word in his tone, can hear it underlying everything that he’s said so far. 

“But.” He looks at the floor, avoiding her gaze. “But I’ve spent so much time trying _not_ to do that, you know? Trying not to think about it. Trying to change the memories. Trying to avoid them. In order for this to work, it needs to be clean and strong. Perfectly focused, and I--” Tony shakes his head, almost as though trying to dislodge the doubts from it. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

She nods, remains silent for long enough to make him look at her, only speaks when she finally has his gaze. “Okay. So let me do it.”

* * *

“This is going to mess up your hair,” Tony says apologetically, as he parts it to apply the electrodes to her scalp. He works surprisingly deftly, though it feels a little odd to have him standing over her, their positions reversed as she sits in the chair.

The adhesive is cold against her skin and she suppresses a shiver. “Just as long as you don’t fry my brain.”

“As long as _you_ don’t fry your brain, you mean,” says Tony. “When you’re wearing the interface, you’re in charge.” He catches her look of apprehension. “Don’t worry. I redid the safety parameters. No brain frying for anybody.”

“My shirt and I approve,” says Natasha, taking a deep breath as he finishes with the last of the electrodes. “Ready?”

He steps out of the area where the projection will emerge, nods at her. “If you are.”

“F.R.I.D.A.Y.,” she begins, taking another breath, “run script.”

Natasha closes her eyes as she simultaneously hears and feels the program coming to life, the electrodes causing a tingling sensation against her skin, almost like someone might be very gently running fingertips through her hair. She focuses on the memory she’s chosen, the one she’s recalled countless times by now, in therapist’s offices and in her nightmares alike. She has a sense of--not calm, exactly, as she brings the images slowly to mind, repeats them three times over to give the program every chance she thinks it might need--but not panic, either. Familiarity is the main thing she feels, and sadness, forever for the fact that the events she’s about to replay won’t ever truly change in actuality, can only evolve in their relation to the rest of her life that came after.

When she opens her eyes again, the lab has transformed entirely within the confines of the holographic projectors. She’s standing in a narrow alley now, tall buildings pressing in on either side, the pavement in front of her wet from cold rain. In front of her lie the sprawled, lifeless bodies of the team members she’s brought into the field. They’re face-down, but she knows from memory that they’ve been shot between the eyes, one elegant bullet for each man. A young woman--barely more than a girl, really--stands over them, blonde hair soaked and plastered to her shoulders. She’s wearing a S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue tacsuit, identical to Natasha’s own, and holding a gun aimed directly at her.

“Valentina,” Natasha breathes, the words coming to her lips like ghosts. Half of her wants to stop right now, to call this good enough and declare a comfortable end to the trial. But she knows that it wouldn’t be enough, that she needs to finish this by showing that the experience can be truly interactive, as it’s meant to be.

“Natasha.” The younger woman speaks without a trace of an accent, learned her flawless English in the same bunker she did, probably using the same American cartoons.

“What are you doing?” Natasha asks, though she knows the answer, _knew_ the answer immediately, even the first time. 

Valentina gives her a look of disdain, her finger playing at the gun’s trigger. “What you should have a long time ago.”

For an instant it feels real--feels the way it did the first time, the way it still does, in dreams, when they take her by surprise. For an instant Natasha is certain that Valentina is about to put a bullet in her head the way she already has to the rest of the team, that there is nothing she can do to avoid it, because she’s trusted the girl as a partner and ended up here. For an instant, she’s ready to accept that this is the way her life ends. 

Then Valentina flips the gun around with an impossible ease, her long fingers graceful as she pulls the trigger cleanly and shoots herself instead. Her body falls to the ground with an unforgiving _thud_ and the projection fades away, the blank walls of the lab making Natasha blink in surprise.

Tony is watching her when she turns around, a look of shock on his face.

“Not what you expected?” she asks, wondering suddenly exactly what he _would_ have expected, what he might think she’d find traumatic. Torture, probably. In some form.

He shakes his head, seems to be speechless for once in his life.

“About a year after Clint brought me in, we raided the bunker where I was trained,” says Natasha, figuring that she owes him the explanation, the context for the scene he’s just witnessed. “There weren’t very many girls left--I guess they must have known they were compromised, once I’d defected. But the ones we did find, we gave a choice--Come work for S.H.I.E.L.D., have a second chance, if they wanted it. Valentina was the only one who took us up on it. She made it six months, working with me to recover from what the Red Room did to her. She made it into the field, but--Well, you saw. What Clint did for me, I couldn’t do for her.”

“That’s--” Tony takes a breath, still seems to be searching for words. “How are you so calm right now?”

“I have a good poker face?” she suggests, then shakes her head, deciding he deserves all the honesty she has to give right now. “Therapy. Lots of it.”

Tony gapes at her for a moment. “You went to therapy? Really?”

She gives him an indulgent look. “Really. How else do you think one recovers from brainwashing?”

He shrugs, sheepishly. “I don’t know. Magic?”

Natasha snorts. “If only.” She pauses, waits to see if he’s going to speak again, then decides to continue when he doesn’t. “So, I’d say that test was a success, wouldn’t you?”

He nods. “Definitely. Definite success.”

“Do you have what you need to move on to the next phase of the project, then?” she asks.

Tony thinks for a moment, still seeming lost in his thoughts somehow. “Theoretically, yes.”

“But?”

“But.” He licks his lips. “I think I want to do what you just did.”

* * *

Natasha applies the electrodes for him this time, partly because it feels like it’s only fair that she should reciprocate, and partly because she suspects that Tony’s hands are shaking too much for him to do an effective job on his own. 

He closes his eyes the same way she did, a barely-audible hitch in his breathing as he tries to steady himself, tries to focus. For a long time, the projection remains nondescript, remains nothing more than the white glow she’s now seen dozens of times. Natasha realizes that she’s holding her own breath, willing him not to give up on this.

When the scene comes together, it happens quickly, as though some dam inside of his mind has broken, releasing the deluge of fear and regret embodied by the hologram. First the room darkens, until Natasha can scarcely see what’s left of it around her. Then the air above them yawns open, forms the swirling vortex of the wormhole she remembers in equally vivid detail. There are Chitauri coming through it, though they aren’t even close to the worst part of the image. On the ground, Natasha sees herself sprawled, eyes open but devoid of life. The rest of the team is littered across the ground nearby, the landscape charred and blistered.

Tony opens his eyes, then, inhales sharply at the vision in front of him. He takes one step forward, eyes darting around the room as though he’s not sure where it might be safe to look. The truth is that there’s no escape from the horror of this sight, the projection he’s created completely immersive.

She’s always known that he’s good at hiding his anxiety under egotistical bluster, under the bravado he uses like its own suit of armor against the rest of the world. She’s known from the moment she was first assigned as his shadow that many of his choices are guided by fear, based on escape and preemptive avoidance as much as strategy. Until this moment, though, Natasha doesn’t think she’s ever truly appreciated how deep that spiral truly goes, how cruel his demons really are.

“You could have saved us,” breathes the specter of Steve, from the ground, words impossibly soft, yet somehow still audible. He reaches out as if to grab Tony, who’s standing just a few inches away.

“No,” says Tony, his voice tight, almost choked. “No, no, stop.” He turns, in utter panic, pulls the electrodes off again and starts to run for the door.

In his haste, he collides with Natasha, stops dead as the room returns to its normal brightness, the monsters and the wormhole and vision of inadequacy draining away as it does. She catches Tony by the arms to stop him from stumbling in surprise, runs her hands down the sleeves of his shirt and laces their fingers, holding on tightly until he calms enough to look down at her.

“That’s what Wanda showed you,” says Natasha, only half a question. “Isn’t it? She made you afraid that you weren’t enough.”

He nods slowly, his jaw tight. “I’ll never be enough, you know? I mean, I already knew that, but she showed me.”

“Good thing you don’t have to be,” says Natasha. “Good thing none of us has to be, on our own.”

She doesn’t say anything more, doesn’t try to absolve him of his guilt, or tell him that there’s nothing worth regretting. Instead she stands with him in silence, holding onto his hands as his breath comes back to him and his pulse slows from where it’s been beating wildly in both wrists.

* * *

Tony insists on making dinner, afterwards, when he’s maybe regained something like shallow composure.

“Only fair,” he says, when Natasha tries to protest, to argue that she’s the more stable of the two of them right now. “Besides, my omelettes are famous.”

“More like _infamous_ , is what I’ve heard,” she tells him, watches how the smile nearly reaches his eyes.

He appears less than familiar with the stove-side of the Compound’s kitchen, though, and now Natasha is working beside him, neatly grating cheese as he beats eggs with a fork, managing to only send a little sloshing over the rim of the bowl.

“Why did you show me?” he asks finally, not even a hint of teasing in his voice now.

“Valentina?” asks Natasha, cleaning the grater over the sink, then reaching into the fridge for a pack of mushrooms. “Testing the program on volitional memories was the whole point, right?”

“Yeah,” says Tony, opening a cabinet and making a face when he finds it filled with only spare glasses. He tries the next two before finally locating a frying pan. “I mean. We talked about it being a way to interface with our worst memories, and that really was your worst one, wasn’t it? The one that bothers you the most?”

He waits for her to nod.

“So, why that one?” He places the pan on one burner, turns it on, then switches to a larger one. “Why not just lie, show me something easier? It’s not like I would have known.”

A week ago, she thinks, she would have bristled at this, would have become angry over the implication that she’d ever consider doing anything of the sort. Today she recognizes the veiled respect in the question, realizes that he’s asking why she didn’t choose the path he probably would have taken himself.

“You needed me to,” she says simply, gently nudging his arm out of the way as she sets the bowl of cheese near his eggs and grabs the cutting board.

He’s quiet for a long moment, watching butter melt in the pan. “Thanks,” he says finally.

“Anytime,” she says honestly, slicing the first mushroom into precise, thin slivers. “So, what now?”

He shakes himself visibly, seems not to have considered this until her question. He comes up with an answer readily enough, though. “Well, we’ve got the identification algorithm done, it seems. Next we need to see how subsequent interactions with it work.”

“We?” asks Natasha, mildly surprised. There’s still a part of her that’s expected he’ll want to be rid of her as soon this particular hurdle was cleared.

“Yeah,” says Tony. “We. It would still be a mess--well, okay, fair, it _is_ still a mess, but it would be a non-running mess without your help. You’re an integral part of the project now, Agent Romanoff, whether you like it or not.”

She wrinkles her nose at him, aware that he’s ribbing intentionally. “I thought I was useless.”

He sighs, grimaces sheepishly. “You’re never going to let me forget that now, are you?”

“Not anytime soon,” she agrees, watching him dump the eggs into the skillet.

“Well,” says Tony, a glint suddenly in his eyes, “you know what happens when you think about a certain thing a lot, don’t you?”

Natasha groans. “Don’t.”

He grins, waving his spatula in the air triumphantly. “Extra neuron jizz!”

“Your eggs are burning,” says Natasha, though they aren’t. She enjoys the sudden look of alarm on his face as he turns to check them, sticks her tongue out when he realizes he’s been duped.

His laughter, she realizes, is made from hurt, and the secrets now carried between them.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback makes my day!


End file.
